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A Major Reason Why I Do Not Support the HBS Crowd : Rose White

06/19/2011 — Suzan

AKA Fleur Black AKA Violet Gray

I debated putting this post up as I know I will get flamed.

But I do not like bigots or bullies, racists or homophobes.

I especially do not like most of the HBS/”Classic Transsexual” crowd who seem so obsessed with their being the only real transsexuals that they spend much of their lives trashing other post-transsexual women for not meeting their level of “purity of motivations”.

I tend to view this need to trash others who had the same surgery you had because you somehow imagine their motives were less pure than your own to be a form mental illness. A basic lack of both empathy and an understanding that you are not the only real transsexual on the planet, that we are closer to 1 in 1000 of the people on the planet which means there are a whole lot of us.

This is something that has escaped Rose White’s consciousness.

Something I find odd since Rose White is of a group, that is very easy for members of the group I am part of to throw stones at and question the motivations of. You see I came out young, which makes me part of the class who earlier on in the trans-wars put on the t-shirt that read “Primary”. While Rose White1 (who according to a Google search was still a pre-op as late as last year) is what we now call a late emerger. The sort of person my class, during those aforementioned wars referred to as a “Secondary”.

Some of us have outgrown playing those games of many years ago. We spent enough time and exercised our empathy enough to listen to and hear the stories of why people come out older. In the process we grew and gained understanding and sympathy for others beyond ourselves

That said…

No one ever said one could not be both a transsexual and a homophobe, a bigot, or ignorant.

My encounters with Ms. White/Black/Violet have run towards the unpleasant at best.

But I think someone needs say that the following crosses the line of decency in at least the same level of indecency as Autumn’s public trashing of Ashley.

Ban the drag acts, Pride chief urged

A WOMAN has said this weekend’s Calderdale Pride celebration should not include performances by drag acts.

Rose White, a transexual, has written to councillors and the organisers of Calder-dale Pride asking them to either ban the turns or publish a disclaimer about them.

She argues their appearance promotes negative stereotypes about transexuals and encourages hatred of those who have changed sex.

She said: “Drag queens – homosexuals dressed as women – and drag kings, women dressed as men, performing as stereotypical crossdressers promote, foster and reinforce the belief among the audience that any bloke in a frock must be a homosexual.”

Rose, 64, from Skircoat Green, said by allowing the acts to take to the stage they were breaching the Gender Equality Duty, which the council is bound to promote.

“The council needs to prevent anything that reinforces out-of-date stereotyping.

“If these people are allowed to perform in the town in the Pride, they must have a prominent sign stating ‘We are homosexual men – not transexuals’.

How about banning Rose white (Fleur Black/Violet Gray) instead because this person creates a negative impression that all transsexuals are ignorant bigots.

I just love it when know-it-all late emergers, who lived most of their lives with heterosexual male privilege, come out and make these “Last Real Woman” pronouncements.

This person is a total embarrassment and I hope people do not assume all transsexuals and post-transsexuals share this sort of bigoted opinion of gay and lesbian people.

What is even more seriously ridiculous is the idea that drag queens should wear signs proclaiming they are “gay men, not transsexuals”. Are those signs to be in the form of a Pink Triangle.

Perhaps Rose White is ignorant of the centuries long history of “drag” by both gay men and lesbians. It is a history that pre-dates by centuries our ability to find medical assistance with issues surrounding transsexualism.

But more important Drag at Pride Day Festivals is meant to mock the dominant heterosexual paradigm and is part of a long tradition of costuming for festivals and parties.

I actually remember Fleur Black one of Rose White’s aliases. she might well be one of the few people I automatically trash can without her postings even making it to the moderation queue. I remembered associating her with some pretty strange ideas regarding transsexuals and transsexualism.

I just love Google…

I find it interesting that Rose white considers herself such an expert in all things “true transsexual” given the amount of drivel in her e-book.

“Harry Benjamin Syndrome is not the same as transsexualism or transsexuality but is the medical correct term for the very small group of people who genuinely feel to be trapped in bodies that do not match their brain.

“All who claims to be similar, but refuse to to accept the logic, tests, evidence and accuracy of HBS – Harry Benjamin Syndrome are bigots, fools, transgenders, transvestites, crossdressers or autocunniphilics.”

(I love the word “autocunniphilics”, a great pun on Blanchard’s “autogynephilia”.)

“Unfortunately,” Grey writes, “the Wiki board (…) allowed HBS to be lumped in with the transexualism label that many non-HBS crossdressing men claim in order to legitimise their autogynism and homosexual urges.”

(And yes Black, Grey and White are probably the same woman).

Harry Benjamin Part 2

Rose White is explicitly considering her book a continuation of Harry Benjamin’s enormously important work The Transsexual Phenomenon. Benjamin had indeed argued that there were biological men who felt themselves trapped in a man’s body.

White goes on explain why there is a natural continuation from his book, to the idea that the HBS syndrome is completely different from what people like me call other types of transgender conditions:

“Harry advanced the study of truly transexed people and codified diagnostic criteria that has still not been improved on despite the protestations of generations of transgenders and it is only fitting that the condition should actually be known as Harry Benjamin Syndrome – or HBS – to separate its sufferers from all the gay, lesbian, bisexual, crossdressers, transvestites, transgenders, genderqueers, autogynes, non-ops and others who claim to be afflicted with exactly the same condition that Harry found when in fact they have nothing but various degrees of mis-nurturing to account for their weird urges.”

Not transsexual

One major point in the book is the need for a term that does not associate the HBS transwomen with “transgenders”. You may already have met classical transsexual activists that redefine the word “transgender” to mean autogynephiliacs and effeminate gay men only. White takes this line of argument to the next level, by arguing that the word “transsexual” has become tainted as well.

“In practices HBS do not like to have the word ‘transsexual’ applied to them as it has been adopted by a vast number of people who are not but not merely give the impression of being of opposite sex and/or gender to that they really are. Thus crossdressers, transvestites, genderqueers and similar claim the label ‘transsexual’ when in fact they are perfectly happy with their bodies and genitals and would not accept genital surgery if offered to them.”

Charlotte Goiar has put a link to the book on the HBS International (English) site, but only to the PayLoadz site where you can pay for it without seeing it. There is no link to the CompletelyNovel site. Nor is it admitted that Violet Grey is Rose White.

Actually, CompletelyNovel give the books title as Harry Benjamin Syndrome Review, but internally the title is given as Transsexual Phenomenon #2: HBS: Harry Benjamin’s Syndrome comes of age.

While the book is claiming to be a successor to Harry Benjamin’s Transsexual Phenomenon, there are no footnotes, no bibliography and no index. Internal citations to other publications are usually either wrong or inadequate, and she freely replaces ‘transsexual’ with ‘HBS’ in quotations from others without editorial brackets and without clarity that she is doing so. A very serious defect is that the page numbers given on the contents page are plain wrong: e.g Chapter 6 is said to be on p37, but it actually starts on p44.
The first 18 chapter comprise 108 pages, and each make a short point. Chapter 19 alone is another 108 pages, and rambles and rants. I suspect that many readers will skip the last chapter.

Jargon. In addition to ‘HBS’ which is unquestioned here (as you would expect from the book’s two titles), there are other usages which need to be explained. Fortunately she devotes chapter 2 to how she uses some of the words.

She and they say ‘gender’ where most of us would say ‘gender identity’. This is confusing, but this misuse is not confined to HBS persons, and in fact is a usage popularized by Virginia Prince.

‘Mangina’ was a term used by Joseph Kirchner after his return to being male. I have never seen any other person identify with the term. Rose and HBS persons have imposed this term on men who wish for or have acquired a vagina without becoming a woman. They show no interest in the self-chosen terms used by such men.

She and others use BLZB, sometimes expanded to Beelzebub, which means Blanchard, Lawrence, Zucker and Bailey. Rose sometimes writes as if this were one person or one thing.

White-Black-Grey also has some personal usages that need to be spelt out.

As already mentioned, she persistently writes ‘autogyne’ instead of ‘autogynephilic’: “Autogyne (sic) was conjured up by Ray Blanchard, leader of the Beelzebub gang at Toronto’s CAMH” (p13).

She uses the old-fashioned, not to say patronizing, GG=Genuine Girl for cis women, and Norm for cis men.

She often uses HBS, transgender etc as nouns, as against the common opinion that they should be used only as adjectives.

Body Clocking Effect (p16). Rose claims that an HBS woman on estrogen ends up looking 15 years younger, while a lesbian will look like an old man by her fifties.

BRSS=Bindel-Raymond-Stein Syndrome. See below. One can understand Rose putting Bindel and Raymond into this, but who is Stein? It turns out to be Gertrude. I don’t know of Gertrude Stein being transphobic, and Rose does not produce any such evidence.

FBMS=Fourrat-Bailey-McHugh Syndrome. See below.

IPAP=Induced Pheromic Addiction Perversion. See below.

Anne Vitale Effect. She uses this term but does not define it. I used Google to find Rose defining it here: “Effect of rising testo needing feminine expression followed by falling testo causing lack of female thinking and the urge to purge”. See also here where Lilacwoman (presumably Rose again) sends readers to Anee Vitale’s TNote 15.

Natalie-Rose Syndrome. An increased need to urinate as the prostate has shrunk and the bladder is sitting lower.

MBEPR=Malignant Bisexuals’ Ego Protection Reflex.

Bigots and Fools. This is the title of Chapter 10. Enemies are “the Fouratist homo, the public, the press, bigots and fools, ignorant medics, penny pinching political manipulators, BRSS dykes, religious pedophiles, closet homos and … Manginas”. She particularly decries writers Fourat, Bindel, Burchill, Batty and Raymond. You may know who each of these are, but in this book they are simply denounced with no explanation. This is the most homophobic chapter with its obsession about oral sex and wild fantasies of what oral sex does. See more below.

Some of her points:

HBS are not “crossdressers, manginas. transgenders, autogynes, wimps, perverts, genderqueers, genderbenders, drag queens, fetishists, drag kings, transvestites, AIS, Klinfelters, hermaphrodites, male post-ops, female post-ops, non-ops, closet gay, closet lesbians, gays who have ingested too much sperm over the years, lesbians who have ingested too much vaginal secretions, people who have been exposed to unrecognised chemical poisoning at work or in the environment, mental cases” (p24). An HBS, unlike the experts and the transgenders, can tell another HBS from all of the above.

She explains that Harry Benjamin was a researcher in Chicago (p1). She must be better informed than other writers who thought that he worked in New York and San Francisco only.

The problem with living in glass houses is that it makes throwing stones a risky proposition.

One of the things I have noticed about a number of the most fervent supporters of things such as HBS, “true transsexual”, and “classic transsexual” is that when I actually dig into their material a bit or their biographies, I often find people who wouldn’t meet the criteria they are setting forth.

It is almost as though they are trying to convince themselves.

I’ve also noticed many are late emergers and I think that plays a part of this phenomena. It’s weird when they attack people who have managed their lives 10, 20, 30, 40 years and more post-SRS and even post-transsexual. I find a newly transitioned person claiming to know so much more than a woman with years of actual experience being a woman to be very androcentric and dismissive of the lives these women have lived.

Like this:

Related

15 Responses to “A Major Reason Why I Do Not Support the HBS Crowd : Rose White”

I think Rose White is making a point, albeit somewhat mischievously.
In my early days of transition, the most bigoted transphobes I ever encountered were homosexual, likewise (and by far the majority) the most supportive were homosexual.
There is an element of the gay community who think they understand transsexual, but actually don’t. They think we are simply gay, like them, but so guilt ridden by our homosexuality we transition our bodies to make ourselves appear ‘normal.’ That’s BS.
But Rose has perhaps opened the debate. There is a very real difference between sexual orientation and gender that is far too often overlooked by the gay community.

How about banning Rose White from the pride event or even better renaming it the Rose White day and have every concievable variation of dress from nudity right through to fetish, in her name for the day:)

A charity spanking event called the Rose White Spankathon at pride, might be good to raise some money for charity. I will let others think who best to have spanked for charity. I should have a good mallet somewhere:)

You do realise this person is actually suggesting banning gay people from gay pride.

As a post op woman myself, if I wanted to avoid drag queens and drag kings I would just not go where they perform. Drag is not my thing personally, but it does no harm and can be funny as hell if you get the right one.

In my opinion, Rose White who wrote that letter calling for a ban on gay people dressing up as the opposite sex at a pride event, is an idiot.

On a side note:

Ever notice how all the Classic Transsexual / HBS people seem to be very late transitioners who do not have a hope in hell of passing, yet talk online as though they are perfect in every way and call for those who are not the pinnacle of perfection to be called transvestite? Just an observation.

Both Suzan and I make that point with great vigor, and without being homophobic.

I do not think there is anything “mischievous” about ignorance.

We have both made very strong statements about not only the lack of knowledge, but also the lack of empathy, within parts of the gay and lesbian communities.

I guess it’s only natural for many lesbian and gay folks to look at things in ways that relate to their struggle.

We have to look to ours — without becoming as limited as many of the HBS and “Classic Transsexual” folks become.

Being willing to work with folks on our COMMON struggle does not mean becoming “weak”, nor does being willing to talk make you a “doormat” — even though some “Transgender Leaders” seem to think it does.

In addition, I believe some Lesbian and Gay leaders WANT to believe in a “Transgender Umbrella” — it means they can FOREVER relegate us to some neverland of “the third” – as Kate Bornstein once wrote of us — though perhaps she was just selling her act.

Transsesxualism is nothing to do with gender. Sex is what transsexual people change and sex is between the legs. The only way to change gender would be by some very tricky neurosurgery, which has not yet been invented and hopefully never will be.

In the English language gender is a construct in the mind and sex is between your legs.

I’ve read a few things over the past few weeks that make me wonder what some of the HBS/classic/true transsexual crowd thinks they’re accomplishing. I’m still new to all this; in fact, I’m pre-op. I do believe that transsexualism is a medical issue and I don’t care to be included in the umbrella, and I am changing my sex, not my gender.. but… I see so much hate and anger coming from that crowd that it’s a complete turn-off. I end up tuning them out. Let alone that “HBS” doesn’t even exist as a medical condition.

I don’t know if any group in history has accomplished something lasting through the use of such negativity.

This is getting really aggravating.
Way too many dull. boring people, who have no concept about freedom and liberty;
Trying to make us dull, boring people, thinking it will give us freedom and liberty.

And this I believe is the key of everything. To me it simply appears this person and those that thing similar are just trying to find validation. But its so easy to plug the rug under them because what if the stated “rules” to be a “real womyn” arent there, what would you do?

What if suddenly somehow the things like painting nails and such were taken away from those persons? Then they wont be real womyn right?

If anyone wants to follow up on what the bigot called Rose White, Fleur Black, Violet Grey or possible other alias’s has to say, you can read her book. She definately has a thing for naming herself after flowers.

Suzan:
> Perhaps Rose White is ignorant of the centuries long history
> of “drag” by both gay men and lesbians. It is a history that
> pre-dates by centuries our ability to find medical assistance
> with issues surrounding transsexualism.

It doesn’t pre-date transsexualism though, because it is a condition known in every culture, on every continent, and throughout the ages. Long before our term for it was coined (after 1,500 years of namelessness imposed by christianity). So our seeking to be rid of male genitalia, be a female as possible, do anything to assuage the need, and dress appropriately, probably pre-dates drag, or is at least as old. Drag being a commentary (I would suggest upon the opposite sex rather than on heteronormativity), by wearing clothes one feels alien, rather than a need, would, I suspect make it a construction, and so younger. But perhaps not by much.

Ms White just hasn’t realised that when a pride event says it is for T, it means drag, with other supporters welcome if they agree to get along. Two years ago, London Pride featured the West End cast of ‘Pricilla, Queen of the Desert’, in full costume, and said it was representing trans. Drag is homosexual; other T can be homosexual too, but those who aren’t should perhaps only attend if they are determined to be supporters, or are explicitly invited.

Actually, though, I disagree with your assessment of “medical” intervention as a criteria. Who is to say that our castrations in pre-history were not done by the most skilled available? The accounts of Persian, Egyptian, and Chinese castrations show great skill and ingenuity being used in trying to preserve the life and ability to pass water in something that had a high likelihood of fatality (as opposed to simple, ritual penectomy, which was de-skilled to the level of there being special, cast-bronze clamps so that anyone with a blade could do it). Roman doctors were highly skilled, and very confident, but unfortunately the Emperor banned any change to genitalia (leading to the Jewish revolt, their loss of Judea, and the Diaspora), and the Christian monks only copied on down Roman and Greek medical texts. Which is what western doctors worked from until only a few years ago, really. The Hijra and Kathoey procedure of the Indian sub-continent may go back to the Persian court, and, although described recently by Indian doctors as done by “quacks” (they are promising modern reconstructions, in state hospitals), does the job of creating something like a female-looking genital area, and preserves life.

As for males dressing as females in processions, well, that might have started with us. It goes way back past Roman times, and probably comes from those who marked the rebirth, the liberation from the underworld, of their goddess’ beautiful young lover, who had changed into a woman after being castrated and then cast down to death, from where she rescued him. An annual and major theme in several cults (who had female-dressed, castrated servants to the goddess) spread right across Eurasia,and eventually major in the Roman empire, often celebrated right about what is now appropriated as Easter, the time of rebirth of nature, spring. Easter of course celebrates Jesus rising from death, from a cave, too. Carnival is also in spring. In the context I think its doubtful the celebrants of that goddess and her lover would have been mocking women, but drag might have originated from others, perhaps christians, or perhaps just drunks, mocking them. So maybe mocking us. Hmmmm.

I didn’t say it pre-dated transsexualism. I said it pre-dated medical assistance. Prior to the 20th century people with transsexualism either led lives of “quiet desperation” or “passing”. Not unlike transgender people of today only without hormone , but perhaps with castration.
During the US Civil War there were a number of male soldiers who were discovered upon their death in battle to be female.

I guess, after reading this, I have to ask, “what is the point”. Of course I am referring to Rose White.

Why would you do this? What is the purpose of HBS, what does it do? How does it help? Who does it help? How does it better replace the existing literature? It seems like an exercise in vanity and neurosis, to me.

Andrea B said:
“Ever notice how all the Classic Transsexual / HBS people seem to be very late transitioners who do not have a hope in hell of passing, yet talk online as though they are perfect in every way”

I’m working class and radical. I use the phrase “hippie dyke” to describe myself. I don’t use a bunch of euphemisms or make up words meant to make one group sound superior to another.

Women born Transsexual, a meme that is over ten years old was pretty much aimed at the Bailey/Blanchard/Zuckers of the world as a way of saying “Fuck you, I was born this way.” I don’t have to prove it any more than you have to prove you were born straight white men (although I am dubious about the straight part with at least Bailey).

HBS/Classic Transsexual is total bullshit, as far as I am concerned. As long as assigned female at birth women do not have to meet some sort of exact standard of sexuality, femininity or other behavior to be consider women neither should post SRS women.

The funny thing is I’ve seen photos of several of the loudest proponents of HBS/Classic Transsexual and it is a good thing youth and beauty are not required. Now with Rose White it seems neither is coming out when one has the agency of adulthood which generally means before 30.

As far as I am concerned if someone had sex reassignment to become female then they are female unless they take medical steps to reverse that process. That includes people I don’t like.

I also respect transgender people enough to use the pronouns of preference.

Over the last four years I have got to know a LOT of Thai, Burmese, Malaysian, Chinese, Sami, Siberian, Iranian, Jordanian, Egpytian, South African, Chilean, Brazilian and others, in various language courses.

I have news for you, at minimum castration and penectomy was a lot more common in those cultures for people that seem to fit our description, than we have acknowledged here in the west. Castration was very common. Rarely penectomy happened as well.

From what I could find out, the knowledge to perform a penectomy was available before Alexander the Great in both Egypt and India. Very basic forms of plastic surgery such as crude skin grafts were available back then in those two countries. India has had crude nasal reconstruction using skin flaps for over 2,500 years. The instructions for it are in some of there oldest texts.

The basic medical tool set that is used for surgery today, is actually based on tools that were in use in India, Dacia, Egypt and Iran about 300BC. The only difference being that today there are twice as many, as modern surgeons do not use double ended surgical tools, as there ancient ancestors did.

Siberians until recently also used to castrate very young on TS type kids and there was a place for them in there society.

It is only in our judeo-christian-islamic-satanist world that there is no place in society for that type of kid.

One of the older Thai women has told me that Katooey quite often got more than castrated before westernisation. Penectomy was performed sometimes as well, usually when very young. Talking to her was very illuminating. She considers those who are transphobic to be vulgar, oversexualised and blinded by there need to embrace all things western. She made clear I was the first westerner she has met, who has not fetishised people from the far east. She also liked the fact that I respected that her culture as very conservative and that being katoey is actually part of there culture, not a western sexual thing which it has become recently. She also likes the fact that I brew her honey wine for her, which she can not buy locally in the shops:)

The Roman Emperor Elagabalus ordered his surgeons to turn him into a woman. It is debated wether they suceeded in any capacity, before he was killed. From reading about Elagabalus it is kind of obvious that a transsexual had been made emporer. Castration and penectomy was possible at that time in Rome, as it was before the christians went on the rampage, destroyed metal working and banned surgery/medicine as black magic.